Research: Cloud Storage

Michael Biddick06/01/11

Cloud Storage : Changing Dynamics Beyond Services

Our recent InformationWeek Analytics State of Cloud Computing Survey showed overall acceptance of these services; just 33% of 607 respondents said they wouldn’t use off-premises providers, down from 48% in our 2010 poll. However, that doesn’t tell the whole story. When we broke down those currently using cloud services, 53% said they’ve adopted SaaS vs. 28% using infrastructure-as-a-service offerings. That got us wondering: What piece of the IT infrastructure would be the first to make the leap?

Storage seemed like a good bet; however, our 2011 State of Enterprise Storage Survey showed a lot of caution around public storage services. Of course, the terms “cloud” and “storage” both cover a lot of ground. Long-term email archiving is a different beast from disaster recovery, which is different from application backup. And EMC is different from Joe’s Cut-Rate Cloud. Still, skepticism rules, so we decided to dig deeper into our readers’ plans for a range of innovative technologies that could help flatten the steep curve of data growth and ease the pressure storage puts on the IT budget.

In this InformationWeek Analytics report, we’ll discuss the results of that survey, evaluate where the cloud offers a viable alternative to on-premises storage—and where it doesn’t—and explore our general lack of adoption of technologies that could tame the storage beast. (R2750611)